Just another 5 hour endurance full electric VTOL

We VTOLized the Raptor E1, at the same time we further optimized the power plant to achieve 50-80 Watt power consumption at cruise speed at 16.5 m/s with 3.5 Kg payload.

All in all very happy with the conversion. If anyone interested we are taking pre-orders to setup a manufacturing line with an aerospace composite partner company in England UK. This would allow us to release a high quality full composite platform at an accessible price tag.

In simple terms: The most important factor is to reduce wing-loading, so you need both use a superlightweight construction and or increase wing area accordingly. To give you an example the fuselage when it comes out of the mold it weighs only 420-460 gm and in fact it will loose ~ 50 gm during hatch cut-outs.

Our wings have a total area of 0.75 sq meter and they weigh ~1.5 Kg ,

So with our motor only weighing ~ 600 gm you can see how it really compares to other UAVs where they weigh in excess of 7 kg just for the airframe. We have a RTF airframe with 7 kg battery and everything. In fact you can have a smaller battery and payload and still be under 7 kg.

Anyhow, once you have sorted out the wingloading which is the predominant factor for minimum power flight for powered aircraft , then next thing you have to do is reduce drag. Two things we have done for this problem. By the way wingloading and construction is why the Zephyr and Solar impulse have such exceptional endurance figures.

1) The airfoils have been designed for maximum power factor, that is we have maximized the lift:drag ratio as the dominant requirement during airfoil design process, the other factor we used during airfoil design was pitching moment (Cm) this allowed us to reduce the size of the elevator required to balance the aircraft.

This brings us to point number 2) Minimize total drag.To this end we created a fuselage with a single design factor: minimum drag. For this we used a natural laminar flow fuselage optimized for the Reynold numbers of cruise flight.

Now the other things we are doing right now, is working towards a set of wing tips that would allows to gain further performance in minimum power flight. This is quite important, as you know wingtips are optimize for a specific condition only. By optimizing for flight in minimum power it is theoretically possible to achieve as high performance gains as ~ 10%. I understand that you say wow that is too much. But in fact if you optimize your wingtips for minimum power essentially you are reducing the impact from tip vortex. As you would know wing tip vortices are most severe under high Cl conditions.

Hope this helps.

With respect to payload, we can customize payload bay to your requirements. do you need brushless gimbal stabilization for a sony A7, no problem, do you need to drop a bottle of whiskey? again plenty of volume for integration.

The actual price of the complete product will be somewhere between £19-24K, it is the nature of aerospace composites and nomex sandwich composites that makes it impossible to get the cost down to $500, this is the deposit for a pre-order.

Please drop an email at info@raptoruas.com if you would like to discuss about this platform.

Many thanks

Dale Greer said:

What's the status of this? It's hard to tell from your website. Is it $500? What exactly do you get for that?

The webpage throws out "ISR, Mapping, LIDAR, Multispectral" and even "transponder". Are these available options or just suggestions? What about ADS-B?

The actual price of the complete product will be somewhere between £19-24K, it is the nature of aerospace composites and nomex sandwich composites that makes it impossible to get the cost down to $500, this is the deposit for a pre-order.

Please drop an email at info@raptoruas.com if you would like to discuss about this platform.

Many thanks

Dale Greer said:

What's the status of this? It's hard to tell from your website. Is it $500? What exactly do you get for that?

The webpage throws out "ISR, Mapping, LIDAR, Multispectral" and even "transponder". Are these available options or just suggestions? What about ADS-B?